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3 Industrialisation in the Colonies Let us now move to India to see how a colony industrialises. Once again we will look not only at factory industries but also at the non-mechanised sector. We will limit our discussion primarily to textile industries. 3.1 The Age of Indian Textiles Activity Before the age of machine industries, silk and cotton goods from On a map of Asia, find and draw the sea and India dominated the international market in textiles. Coarser cottons land links of the textile trade from India to were produced in many countries, but the finer varieties often came Central Asia, West Asia and Southeast Asia. from India. Armenian and Persian merchants took the goods from Punjab to Afghanistan, eastern Persia and Central Asia. Bales of fine The Age of Industrialisation textiles were carried on camel back via the north-west frontier, through mountain passes and across deserts. A vibrant sea trade operated through the main pre-colonial ports. Surat on the Gujarat coast connected India to the Gulf and Red Sea Ports; Masulipatam on the Coromandel coast and Hoogly in Bengal had trade links with Southeast Asian ports. A variety of Indian merchants and bankers were involved in this network of export trade – financing production, carrying goods and supplying exporters. Supply merchants linked the port towns to the inland regions. They gave advances to weavers, procured the woven cloth from weaving villages, and carried the supply to the ports. At the port, the big shippers and export merchants had brokers who negotiated the price and bought goods from the supply merchants operating inland. By the 1750s this network, controlled by Indian merchants, was breaking down. The European companies gradually gained power – first securing a variety of concessions from local courts, then the monopoly rights to trade. This resulted in a decline of the old ports of Surat and Hoogly through which local merchants had operated. Exports from these ports fell dramatically, the credit that had financed the earlier trade began drying up, and the local bankers slowly went bankrupt. In the last years of the seventeenth century, the gross value of trade that passed through Surat had been Rs 16 million. By the 1740s it had slumped to Rs 3 million. 89 2020-21

Fig. 13 – The English factory at Surat, a seventeenth-century drawing. India and the Contemporary World While Surat and Hoogly decayed, Bombay and Calcutta grew. This shift from the old ports to the new ones was an indicator of the growth of colonial power. Trade through the new ports came to be controlled by European companies, and was carried in European ships. While many of the old trading houses collapsed, those that wanted to survive had to now operate within a network shaped by European trading companies. How did these changes affect the life of weavers and other artisans? 3.2 What Happened to Weavers? Fig. 14 – A weaver at work, Gujarat. The consolidation of East India Company power after the 1760s did not initially lead to a decline in textile exports from India. British cotton industries had not yet expanded and Indian fine textiles were in great demand in Europe. So the company was keen on expanding textile exports from India. Before establishing political power in Bengal and Carnatic in the 1760s and 1770s, the East India Company had found it difficult to ensure a regular supply of goods for export. The French, Dutch, 90 2020-21

Portuguese as well as the local traders competed in the market New words The Age of Industrialisation to secure woven cloth. So the weaver and supply merchants Sepoy – This is how the British pronounced could bargain and try selling the produce to the best buyer. In the word sipahi, meaning an Indian soldier in their letters back to London, Company officials continuously the service of the British complained of difficulties of supply and the high prices. 91 However, once the East India Company established political power, it could assert a monopoly right to trade. It proceeded to develop a system of management and control that would eliminate competition, control costs, and ensure regular supplies of cotton and silk goods. This it did through a series of steps. First: the Company tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers connected with the cloth trade, and establish a more direct control over the weaver. It appointed a paid servant called the gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth. Second: it prevented Company weavers from dealing with other buyers. One way of doing this was through the system of advances. Once an order was placed, the weavers were given loans to purchase the raw material for their production. Those who took loans had to hand over the cloth they produced to the gomastha. They could not take it to any other trader. As loans flowed in and the demand for fine textiles expanded, weavers eagerly took the advances, hoping to earn more. Many weavers had small plots of land which they had earlier cultivated along with weaving, and the produce from this took care of their family needs. Now they had to lease out the land and devote all their time to weaving. Weaving, in fact, required the labour of the entire family, with children and women all engaged in different stages of the process. Soon, however, in many weaving villages there were reports of clashes between weavers and gomasthas. Earlier supply merchants had very often lived within the weaving villages, and had a close relationship with the weavers, looking after their needs and helping them in times of crisis. The new gomasthas were outsiders, with no long-term social link with the village. They acted arrogantly, marched into villages with sepoys and peons, and punished weavers for delays in supply – often beating and flogging them. The weavers lost the space to bargain for prices and sell to different buyers: the price they received from the Company was miserably low and the loans they had accepted tied them to the Company. 2020-21

In many places in Carnatic and Bengal, weavers deserted villages and migrated, setting up looms in other villages where they had some family relation. Elsewhere, weavers along with the village traders revolted, opposing the Company and its officials. Over time many weavers began refusing loans, closing down their workshops and taking to agricultural labour. By the turn of the nineteenth century, cotton weavers faced a new set of problems. 3.3 Manchester Comes to India In 1772, Henry Patullo, a Company official, had ventured to Source C say that the demand for Indian textiles could never reduce, since no other nation produced goods of the same quality. Yet by The Commissioner of Patna wrote: the beginning of the nineteenth century we see the beginning of a long decline of textile exports from India. In 1811-12 ‘It appears that twenty yeas ago, a brisk trade piece-goods accounted for 33 per cent of India’s exports; by was carried on in the manufacture of cloth at 1850-51 it was no more than 3 per cent. Jahanabad, and Behar, which has in the former place entirely ceased, while in the latter the Why did this happen? What were its implications? amount of manufacture is very limited, in consequence of the cheap and durable goods As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups began from Manchester with which the Native worrying about imports from other countries. They pressurised manufactures are unable to compete.’ the government to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without facing any Quoted in J. Krishnamurty, ‘Deindustrialisation in competition from outside. At the same time industrialists persuaded Gangetic Bihar during the nineteenth century’, the East India Company to sell British manufactures in Indian The Indian Economic and Social History Review, markets as well. Exports of British cotton goods increased 1985. dramatically in the early nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century there had been virtually no import of cotton Source piece-goods into India. But by 1850 cotton piece-goods constituted over 31 per cent of the value of Indian imports; and by the 1870s Source D this figure was over 50 per cent. India and the Contemporary World Reporting on the Koshtis, a community of Cotton weavers in India thus faced two problems at the same time: weavers, the Census Report of Central Provinces their export market collapsed, and the local market shrank, being stated: glutted with Manchester imports. Produced by machines at lower costs, the imported cotton goods were so cheap that weavers could ‘The Koshtis, like the weavers of the finer kinds not easily compete with them. By the 1850s, reports from most of cloth in other parts of India, have fallen upon weaving regions of India narrated stories of decline and desolation. evil times. They are unable to compete with the showy goods which Manchester sends in such By the 1860s, weavers faced a new problem. They could not get profusion, and they have of late years emigrated sufficient supply of raw cotton of good quality. When the American in great numbers, chiefly to Berar, where as day labourers they are able to obtain wages …’ Census Report of Central Provinces, 1872, quoted in Sumit Guha, ‘The handloom industry in Central India, 1825-1950’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review. Source 92 2020-21

Fig. 15 – Bombay harbour, a late-eighteenth-century drawing. The Age of Industrialisation Bombay and Calcutta grew as trading ports from the 1780s. This marked the decline of the old trading order and the growth of the colonial economy. Civil War broke out and cotton supplies from the US were cut off, Britain turned to India. As raw cotton exports from India increased, the price of raw cotton shot up. Weavers in India were starved of supplies and forced to buy raw cotton at exorbitant prices. In this, situation weaving could not pay. Then, by the end of the nineteenth century, weavers and other craftspeople faced yet another problem. Factories in India began production, flooding the market with machine-goods. How could weaving industries possibly survive? 93 2020-21

4 Factories Come Up India and the Contemporary World The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in 1854 and it went into Fig. 16 – Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. production two years later. By 1862 four mills were at work with Jeejeebhoy was the son of a Parsi weaver. Like 94,000 spindles and 2,150 looms. Around the same time jute mills many others of his time, he was involved in came up in Bengal, the first being set up in 1855 and another one the China trade and shipping. He owned a seven years later, in 1862. In north India, the Elgin Mill was started large fleet of ships, but competition from in Kanpur in the 1860s, and a year later the first cotton mill of English and American shippers forced him to Ahmedabad was set up. By 1874, the first spinning and weaving sell his ships by the 1850s. mill of Madras began production. Fig. 17 – Dwarkanath Tagore. Who set up the industries? Where did the capital come from? Who Dwarkanath Tagore believed that India would came to work in the mills? develop through westernisation and industrialisation. He invested in shipping, 4.1 The Early Entrepreneurs shipbuilding, mining, banking, plantations and insurance. Industries were set up in different regions by varying sorts of people. Let us see who they were. The history of many business groups goes back to trade with China. From the late eighteenth century, as you have read in your book last year, the British in India began exporting opium to China and took tea from China to England. Many Indians became junior players in this trade, providing finance, procuring supplies, and shipping consignments. Having earned through trade, some of these businessmen had visions of developing industrial enterprises in India. In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade before he turned to industrial investment, setting up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s. Tagore’s enterprises sank along with those of others in the wider business crises of the 1840s, but later in the nineteenth century many of the China traders became successful industrialists. In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata who built huge industrial empires in India, accumulated their initial wealth partly from exports to China, and partly from raw cotton shipments to England. Seth Hukumchand, a Marwari businessman who set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917, also traded with China. So did the father as well as grandfather of the famous industrialist G.D. Birla. Capital was accumulated through other trade networks. Some merchants from Madras traded with Burma while others had links with the Middle East and East Africa. There were yet other 94 2020-21

commercial groups, but they were not directly involved in external Fig. 18 – Partners in enterprise – J.N. Tata, trade. They operated within India, carrying goods from one place R.D. Tata, Sir R.J. Tata, and Sir D.J. Tata. to another, banking money, transferring funds between cities, and In 1912, J.N. Tata set up the first iron and steel financing traders. When opportunities of investment in industries works in India at Jamshedpur. Iron and steel opened up, many of them set up factories. industries in India started much later than textiles. In colonial India industrial machinery, As colonial control over Indian trade tightened, the space within railways and locomotives were mostly imported. which Indian merchants could function became increasingly limited. So capital goods industries could not really They were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods, develop in any significant way till Independence. and had to export mostly raw materials and food grains – raw cotton, opium, wheat and indigo – required by the British. They were also gradually edged out of the shipping business. Till the First World War, European Managing Agencies in fact controlled a large sector of Indian industries. Three of the biggest ones were Bird Heiglers & Co., Andrew Yule, and Jardine Skinner & Co. These Agencies mobilised capital, set up joint-stock companies and managed them. In most instances Indian financiers provided the capital while the European Agencies made all investment and business decisions. The European merchant-industrialists had their own chambers of commerce which Indian businessmen were not allowed to join. 4.2 Where Did the Workers Come From? The Age of Industrialisation Factories needed workers. With the expansion of factories, this Fig. 19 – Young workers of a Bombay demand increased. In 1901, there were 584,000 workers in Indian mill, early twentieth century. factories. By 1946 the number was over 2,436, 000. Where did the When workers went back to their village workers come from? homes, they liked dressing up. In most industrial regions workers came from the districts around. Peasants and artisans who found no work in the village went to the industrial centres in search of work. Over 50 per cent workers in the Bombay cotton industries in 1911 came from the neighbouring district of Ratnagiri, while the mills of Kanpur got most of their textile hands from the villages within the district of Kanpur. Most often millworkers moved between the village and the city, returning to their village homes during harvests and festivals. Over time, as news of employment spread, workers travelled great distances in the hope of work in the mills. From the United Provinces, for instance, they went to work in the textile mills of Bombay and in the jute mills of Calcutta. 95 2020-21

Getting jobs was always difficult, even when mills multiplied and the demand for workers increased. The numbers seeking work were always more than the jobs available. Entry into the mills was also restricted. Industrialists usually employed a jobber to get new recruits. Very often the jobber was an old and trusted worker. He got people from his village, ensured them jobs, helped them settle in the city and provided them money in times of crisis. The jobber therefore became a person with some authority and power. He began demanding money and gifts for his favour and controlling the lives of workers. The number of factory workers increased over time. However, as you will see, they were a small proportion of the total industrial workforce. Source E Vasant Parkar, who was once a millworker in Bombay, said: Fig. 20 – A head jobber. Notice how the posture and clothes ‘The workers would pay the jobbers money to get their sons work emphasise the jobber’s position of in the mill … The mill worker was closely associated with his village, authority. physically and emotionally. He would go home to cut the harvest and for sowing. The Konkani would go home to cut the paddy and the Ghati, the sugarcane. It was an accepted practice for which the mills granted leave.’ Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar, One Hundred Years: One Hundred Voices, 2004. Source Source F India and the Contemporary World Bhai Bhosle, a trade unionist of Bombay, recollected his childhood in the 1930s and 1940s: ‘In those days, the shift was 10 hours – from 5 pm to 3 am – terrible working hours. My father worked for 35 years; he got the asthma like disease and could not work any more…Then my father went back to village.’ Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar, One Hundred Years: One Hundred Voices. Source Fig. 21 – Spinners at work in an Ahmedabad mill. Women worked mostly in the spinning departments. 96 2020-21

5 The Peculiarities of Industrial Growth European Managing Agencies, which dominated industrial production in India, were interested in certain kinds of products. They established tea and coffee plantations, acquiring land at cheap rates from the colonial government; and they invested in mining, indigo and jute. Most of these were products required primarily for export trade and not for sale in India. When Indian businessmen began setting up industries in the late nineteenth century, they avoided competing with Manchester goods in the Indian market. Since yarn was not an important part of British imports into India, the early cotton mills in India produced coarse cotton yarn (thread) rather than fabric. When yarn was imported it was only of the superior variety. The yarn produced in Indian spinning mills was used by handloom weavers in India or exported to China. By the first decade of the twentieth century a series of changes affected the pattern of industrialisation. As the swadeshi movement gathered momentum, nationalists mobilised people to boycott foreign cloth. Industrial groups organised themselves to protect their collective interests, pressurising the government to increase tariff protection and grant other concessions. From 1906, moreover, the export of Indian yarn to China declined since produce from Chinese and Japanese mills flooded the Chinese market. So industrialists in India began shifting from yarn to cloth production. Cotton piece- goods production in India doubled between 1900 and 1912. Yet, till the First World War, industrial growth The Age of Industrialisation was slow. The war created a dramatically new situation. With British mills busy with Fig. 22 – The first office of the Madras Chamber of Commerce. war production to meet the needs of the By the late nineteenth century merchants in different regions began army, Manchester imports into India meeting and forming Chambers of Commerce to regulate business and declined. Suddenly, Indian mills had a vast decide on issues of collective concern. home market to supply. As the war prolonged, Indian factories were called upon to supply war needs: jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents and leather boots, horse and mule saddles and a host of other items. New factories were set up and old 97 2020-21

ones ran multiple shifts. Many new workers were employed and everyone was made to work longer hours. Over the war years industrial production boomed. After the war, Manchester could never recapture its old position in the Indian market. Unable to modernise and compete with the US, Germany and Japan, the economy of Britain crumbled after the war. Cotton production collapsed and exports of cotton cloth from Britain fell dramatically. Within the colonies, local industrialists gradually consolidated their position, substituting foreign manufactures and capturing the home market. India and the Contemporary World 5.1 Small-scale Industries Predominate Fig. 23 – A Hand-woven Cloth. While factory industries grew steadily after the war, large industries The intricate designs of formed only a small segment of the economy. Most of them – hand-woven cloth could about 67 per cent in 1911 – were located in Bengal and Bombay. not be easily copied by the Over the rest of the country, small-scale production continued to mills. predominate. Only a small proportion of the total industrial labour force worked in registered factories: 5 per cent in 1911 and 10 per New words cent in 1931. The rest worked in small workshops and household units, often located in alleys and bylanes, invisible to the passer-by. Fly shuttle – It is a mechanical device used for weaving, moved by means of ropes and pullies. In fact, in some instances, handicrafts production actually expanded It places the horizontal threads ( called the weft) in the twentieth century. This is true even in the case of the handloom into the verticle threads (called the warp). The sector that we have discussed. While cheap machine-made thread invention of the fly shuttle made it possible wiped out the spinning industry in the nineteenth century, the weavers for weavers to operate large looms and weave survived, despite problems. In the twentieth century, handloom wide pieces of cloth. cloth production expanded steadily: almost trebling between 1900 and 1940. How did this happen? This was partly because of technological changes. Handicrafts people adopt new technology if that helps them improve production without excessively pushing up costs. So, by the second decade of the twentieth century we find weavers using looms with a fly shuttle. This increased productivity per worker, speeded up production and reduced labour demand. By 1941, over 35 per cent of handlooms in India were fitted with fly shuttles: in regions like Travancore, Madras, Mysore, Cochin, Bengal the proportion was 70 to 80 per cent. There were several other small innovations that helped weavers improve their productivity and compete with the mill sector. 98 2020-21

Certain groups of weavers were in a better position than others to survive the competition with mill industries. Amongst weavers some produced coarse cloth while others wove finer varieties. The coarser cloth was bought by the poor and its demand fluctuated violently. In times of bad harvests and famines, when the rural poor had little to eat, and their cash income disappeared, they could not possibly buy cloth. The demand for the finer varieties bought by the well-to-do was more stable. The rich could buy these even when the poor starved. Famines did not affect the sale of Banarasi or Baluchari saris. Moreover, as you have seen, mills could not imitate specialised weaves. Saris with woven borders, or the famous lungis and handkerchiefs of Madras, could not be easily displaced by mill production. Weavers and other craftspeople who continued to expand production through the twentieth century, did not necessarily prosper. They lived hard lives and worked long hours. Very often the entire household – including all the women and children – had to work at various stages of the production process. But they were not simply remnants of past times in the age of factories. Their life and labour was integral to the process of industrialisation. Punjab The Age of Industrialisation United Provinces Bihar Central Provinces Bengal Bombay Madras Fig. 24 – Location of large-scale industries in India, 1931. The circles indicate the size of industries in the different regions. 99 2020-21

6 Market for Goods We have seen how British manufacturers attempted to take over Fig. 25 – Gripe Water calendar of 1928 by the Indian market, and how Indian weavers and craftsmen, traders M.V. Dhurandhar. and industrialists resisted colonial controls, demanded tariff The image of baby Krishna was most protection, created their own spaces, and tried to extend the market commonly used to popularise baby products. for their produce. But when new products are produced people have to be persuaded to buy them. They have to feel like using the product. How was this done? One way in which new consumers are created is through advertisements. As you know, advertisements make products appear desirable and necessary. They try to shape the minds of people and create new needs. Today we live in a world where advertisements surround us. They appear in newspapers, magazines, hoardings, street walls, television screens. But if we look back into history we find that from the very beginning of the industrial age, advertisements have played a part in expanding the markets for products, and in shaping a new consumer culture. When Manchester industrialists began selling cloth in India, they put labels on the cloth bundles. The label was needed to make the place of manufacture and the name of the company familiar to the buyer. The label was also to be a mark of quality. When buyers saw ‘MADE IN MANCHESTER’ written in bold on the label, they were expected to feel confident about buying the cloth. India and the Contemporary World Fig. 26(a) – Manchester labels, early twentieth century. Images of numerous Indian gods and goddesses – Kartika, Lakshmi, Saraswati – are shown in imported cloth labels approving the quality of the product being marketed. Fig. 26(b) – Maharaja Ranjit Singh on a Manchester label. Historic figures are used to create respect for the product. Fig. 26(a) Fig. 26(b) 100 2020-21

But labels did not only carry words and texts. They also carried Fig. 27 – Sunlight soap calendar of 1934. images and were very often beautifully illustrated. If we look Here God Vishnu is shown bringing sunlight at these old labels, we can have some idea of the mind of the from across the skies. manufacturers, their calculations, and the way they appealed to the people. The Age of Industrialisation Images of Indian gods and goddesses regularly appeared on these labels. It was as if the association with gods gave divine approval to the goods being sold. The imprinted image of Krishna or Saraswati was also intended to make the manufacture from a foreign land appear somewhat familiar to Indian people. By the late nineteenth century, manufacturers were printing calendars to popularise their products. Unlike newspapers and magazines, calendars were used even by people who could not read. They were hung in tea shops and in poor people’s homes just as much as in offices and middle-class apartments. And those who hung the calendars had to see the advertisements, day after day, through the year. In these calendars, once again, we see the figures of gods being used to sell new products. Like the images of gods, figures of important personages, of emperors and nawabs, adorned advertisement and calendars. The message very often seemed to say: if you respect the royal figure, then respect this product; when the product was being used by kings, or produced under royal command, its quality could not be questioned. When Indian manufacturers advertised the nationalist message was clear and loud. If you care for the nation then buy products that Indians produce. Advertisements became a vehicle of the nationalist message of swadeshi. Conclusion Fig. 28 – An Indian mill cloth label. The goddess is shown offering cloth produced Clearly, the age of industries has meant major technological changes, in an Ahmedabad mill, and asking people to growth of factories, and the making of a new industrial labour use things made in India. force. However, as you have seen, hand technology and small-scale production remained an important part of the industrial landscape. Look again at Figs. 1 and 2. What would you now say of the images they project? 101 2020-21

Write in brief Write in brief India and the Contemporary World 1. Explain the following: Discuss a) Women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny. b) In the seventeenth century merchants from towns in Europe began employing peasants and artisans within the villages. c) The port of Surat declined by the end of the eighteenth century. d) The East India Company appointed gomasthas to supervise weavers in India. 2. Write True or False against each statement: a) At the end of the nineteenth century, 80 per cent of the total workforce in Europe was employed in the technologically advanced industrial sector. b) The international market for fine textiles was dominated by India till the eighteenth century. c) The American Civil War resulted in the reduction of cotton exports from India. d) The introduction of the fly shuttle enabled handloom workers to improve their productivity. 3. Explain what is meant by proto-industrialisation. Discuss 1. Why did some industrialists in nineteenth-century Europe prefer hand labour over machines? 2. How did the East India Company procure regular supplies of cotton and silk textiles from Indian weavers? 3. Imagine that you have been asked to write an article for an encyclopaedia on Britain and the history of cotton. Write your piece using information from the entire chapter. 4. Why did industrial production in India increase during the First World War? Project work Project Select any one industry in your region and find out its history. How has the technology changed? Where do the workers come from? How are the products advertised and marketed? Try and talk to the employers and some workers to get their views about the industry’s history. 102 2020-21

SECTION III EVERYDAY LIFE, CULTURE AND POLITICS 2020-21

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Print Culture and the Modern World Chapter V It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We Print Culture and the Modern World find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals, Print Culture newspapers, prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries, advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers, and track public debates that appear in print. We take for granted this world of print and often forget that there was a time before print. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, in fact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? When did printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped create the modern world? In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. We will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider how social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print. Fig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, from Akhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595. This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century, much before printing began in India. You can see the text being dictated, written and illustrated. The art of writing and illustrating by hand was important in the age before print. Think about what happened to these forms of art with the coming of printing machines. 105 2020-21

1 The First Printed Books The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan New words and Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594 onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also Calligraphy – The art of beautiful and stylised invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks. As both writing sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional India and the Contemporary World Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side. Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy, the beauty of calligraphy. The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major producer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil service examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state. From the sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up and that increased the volume of print. By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the uses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar- officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collected trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity. The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romantic plays. Rich women began to read, and many women began publishing their poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials published their works and courtesans wrote about their lives. This new reading culture was accompanied by a new technology. Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported in the late nineteenth century as Western powers established their outposts in China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture, catering to the Western-style schools. From hand printing there was now a gradual shift to mechanical printing. 1.1 Print in Japan Fig. 2 a – A page from the Diamond Sutra. Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles, 106 2020-21

playing cards and paper money. In Belonging to the mid-13th medieval Japan, poets and prose century, printing woodblocks of writers were regularly published, the Tripitaka Koreana are a Korean and books were cheap and abundant. collection of Buddhist scriptures. They were engraved on about Printing of visual material led to 80,000 woodblocks. They were interesting publishing practices. In inscribed on the UNESCO Memory the late eighteenth century, in the of the World Register in 2007. flourishing urban circles at Edo Source: http://www.cha.go.kr (later to be known as Tokyo), Fig. 2b – Tripitaka Koreana illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, and teahouse gatherings. Libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material of various types – books on women, musical instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, proper etiquette, cooking and famous places. Box 1 Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known for Fig. 3 – An ukiyo his contributions to an art form called ukiyo (‘pictures of the floating print by Kitagawa world’) or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban Utamaro. ones. These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe and influenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Publishers like Tsutaya Juzaburo identified subjects and commissioned artists who drew the theme in outline. Then a skilled woodblock carver pasted the drawing on a woodblock and carved a printing block to reproduce the painter’s lines. In the process, the original drawing would be destroyed and only prints would survive. Fig. 4a – A morning scene, Print Culture ukiyo print by Shunman Kubo, late eighteenth 107 century. A man looks out of the window at the snowfall while women prepare tea and perform other domestic duties. 2020-21

2 Print Comes to Europe For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through New words the silk route. In the eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe via the same route. Paper made possible the production of Vellum – A parchment made from the skin manuscripts, carefully written by scribes. Then, in 1295, Marco Polo, of animals a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China. As you read above, China already had the technology of woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with him. Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe. Luxury editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries which scoffed at printed books as cheap vulgarities. Merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed copies. India and the Contemporary World As the demand for books increased, booksellers all over Europe Fig. 4b – Jikji began exporting books to many different countries. Book fairs were held at different places. Production of handwritten manuscripts was The Jikji of Korea is among the world’s oldest also organised in new ways to meet the expanded demand. Scribes existing books printed with movable metal type. or skilled handwriters were no longer solely employed by wealthy It contains the essential features of Zen or influential patrons but increasingly by booksellers as well. More Buddhism. About 150 monks of India, China and than 50 scribes often worked for one bookseller. Korea are mentioned in the book. It was printed in late 14th century. While the first volume of But the production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the book is unavailable, the second one is available the ever-increasing demand for books. Copying was an expensive, in the National Library of France. This work marked laborious and time-consuming business. Manuscripts were fragile, an important technical change in the print awkward to handle, and could not be carried around or read easily. culture. That is why it was inscribed on the Their circulation therefore remained limited. With the growing UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2001. demand for books, woodblock printing gradually became more and more popular. By the early fifteenth century, woodblocks were being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with simple, brief texts. There was clearly a great need for even quicker and cheaper Activity reproduction of texts. This could only be with the invention of a new print technology. The breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg, Imagine that you are Marco Polo. Write a letter Germany, where Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known from China to describe the world of print which printing press in the 1430s. you have seen there. 108 2020-21

2.1 Gutenberg and the Printing Press Fig. 5 – A Portrait of Print Culture Johann Gutenberg, Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large 1584. agricultural estate. From his childhood he had seen wine and olive presses. Subsequently, he learnt the art of polishing stones, became a Frame master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to create lead moulds used for making trinkets. Drawing on this knowledge, Screw Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his innovation. The olive press provided the model for the printing press, and moulds Handle were used for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet. By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system. The first book he printed Platen was the Bible. About 180 copies were printed and it took three years to produce them. By the standards of the time this was fast Printing block production. placed over paper The new technology did not entirely displace the existing art of producing books by hand. Fig. 6 – Gutenberg Printing Press. Notice the long handle attached to the screw. In fact, printed books at first closely resembled the written This handle was used to turn the screw and manuscripts in appearance and layout. The metal letters imitated the press down the platen over the printing block ornamental handwritten styles. Borders were illuminated by hand that was placed on top of a sheet of damp with foliage and other patterns, and illustrations were painted. In the paper. Gutenberg developed metal types for books printed for the rich, space for decoration was kept blank on each of the 26 characters of the Roman the printed page. Each purchaser could choose the design and decide alphabet and devised a way of moving them on the painting school that would do the illustrations. around so as to compose different words of the text. This came to be known as the moveable In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were type printing machine, and it remained the basic set up in most countries of Europe. Printers from Germany travelled print technology over the next 300 years. to other countries, seeking work and helping start new presses. As Books could now be produced much faster than the number of printing presses grew, book production boomed. was possible when each print block was The second half of the fifteenth century saw 20 million copies of prepared by carving a piece of wood by hand. printed books flooding the markets in Europe. The number went The Gutenberg press could print 250 sheets up in the sixteenth century to about 200 million copies. on one side per hour. This shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution. New words Platen – In letterpress printing, platen is a board which is pressed onto the back of the paper to get the impression from the type. At one time it used to be a wooden board; later it was made of steel 109 2020-21

Fig. 7 – Pages of Gutenberg’s Bible, the first printed book in Europe. Gutenberg printed about 180 copies, of which no more than 50 have survived. Look at these pages of Gutenberg’s Bible carefully. They were not just products of new technology. The text was printed in the new Gutenberg press with metal type, but the borders were carefully designed, painted and illuminated by hand by artists. No two copies were the same. Every page of each copy was different. Even when two copies look similar, a careful comparison will reveal differences. Elites everywhere preferred this lack of uniformity: what they possessed then could be claimed as unique, for no one else owned a copy that was exactly the same. In the text you will notice the use of colour within the letters in various places. This had two functions: it added colour to the page, and highlighted all the holy words to emphasise their significance. But the colour on every page of the text was added by hand. Gutenberg printed the text in black, leaving spaces where the colour could be filled in later. India and the Contemporary World Fig. 8 – A printer’s workshop, sixteenth century. New words This picture depicts what a printer’s shop looked like in the Compositor – The person who composes the sixteenth century. All the activities are going on under one roof. text for printing In the foreground on the right, compositors are at work, while Galley – Metal frame in which types are laid on the left galleys are being prepared and ink is being applied on and the text composed the metal types; in the background, the printers are turning the screws of the press, and near them proofreaders are at work. Right in front is the final product – the double-page printed sheets, stacked in neat piles, waiting to be bound. 110 2020-21

3 The Print Revolution and Its Impact What was the print revolution? It was not just a development, a new way of producing books; it transformed the lives of people, changing their relationship to information and knowledge, and with institutions and authorities. It influenced popular perceptions and opened up new ways of looking at things. Let us explore some of these changes. 3.1 A New Reading Public Activity Print Culture With the printing press, a new reading public emerged. Printing You are a bookseller advertising the availability reduced the cost of books. The time and labour required to produce of new cheap printed books. Design a poster each book came down, and multiple copies could be produced for your shop window. with greater ease. Books flooded the market, reaching out to an ever-growing readership. New words Ballad – A historical account or folk tale in Access to books created a new culture of reading. Earlier, reading verse, usually sung or recited was restricted to the elites. Common people lived in a world of oral Taverns – Places where people gathered to culture. They heard sacred texts read out, ballads recited, and folk drink alcohol, to be served food, and to meet tales narrated. Knowledge was transferred orally. People collectively friends and exchange news heard a story, or saw a performance. As you will see in Chapter 8, they did not read a book individually and silently. Before the age of print, books were not only expensive but they could not be produced in sufficient numbers. Now books could reach out to wider sections of people. If earlier there was a hearing public, now a reading public came into being. But the transition was not so simple. Books could be read only by the literate, and the rates of literacy in most European countries were very low till the twentieth century. How, then, could publishers persuade the common people to welcome the printed book? To do this, they had to keep in mind the wider reach of the printed work: even those who did not read could certainly enjoy listening to books being read out. So printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, and such books would be profusely illustrated with pictures. These were then sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in taverns in towns. Oral culture thus entered print and printed material was orally transmitted. The line that separated the oral and reading cultures became blurred. And the hearing public and reading public became intermingled. 111 2020-21

3.2 Religious Debates and the Fear of Print Print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas, and introduced a new world of debate and discussion. Even those who disagreed with established authorities could now print and circulate their ideas. Through the printed message, they could persuade people to think differently, and move them to action. This had significance in different spheres of life. Not everyone welcomed the printed book, and those who did also had fears about it. Many were apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed word and the wider circulation of books, could have on people’s minds. It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread. If that happened the authority of ‘valuable’ literature would be destroyed. Expressed by religious authorities and monarchs, as well as many writers and artists, this anxiety was the basis of widespread criticism of the new printed literature that had begun Fig. 9 – J.V. Schley, L’Imprimerie, 1739. to circulate. This is one of the many images produced in early modern Europe, celebrating the coming of print. You can see the Let us consider the implication of this in one sphere printing press descending from heaven, carried by a goddess. of life in early modern Europe – namely, religion. On two sides of the goddess, blessing the machine, are Minerva (the goddess of wisdom) and Mercury (the messenger In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote god, also symbolising reason). The women in the foreground Ninety Five Theses criticising many of the practices are holding plaques with the portraits of six pioneer printers of and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. A printed different countries. In the middle ground on the left (figure encircled) is the portrait of Gutenberg. India and the Contemporary World copy of this was posted on a church door in Wittenberg. It challenged the Church to debate his ideas. Luther’s writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely. This lead to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant New words Reformation. Luther’s translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 Protestant Reformation – A sixteenth-century copies within a few weeks and a second edition appeared within movement to reform the Catholic Church three months. Deeply grateful to print, Luther said, ‘Printing is the dominated by Rome. Martin Luther was one ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.’ Several scholars, in fact, of the main Protestant reformers. Several think that print brought about a new intellectual atmosphere and traditions of anti-Catholic Christianity helped spread the new ideas that led to the Reformation. developed out of the movement 112 2020-21

3.3 Print and Dissent New words Print and popular religious literature stimulated many distinctive Inquisition – A former Roman Catholic court individual interpretations of faith even among little-educated working for identifying and punishing heretics people. In the sixteenth century, Menocchio, a miller in Italy, began Heretical – Beliefs which do not follow the to read books that were available in his locality. He reinterpreted the accepted teachings of the Church. In medieval message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation times, heresy was seen as a threat to the right that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. When the Roman Church of the Church to decide on what should be began its inquisition to repress heretical ideas, Menocchio was hauled believed and what should not. Heretical beliefs up twice and ultimately executed. The Roman Church, troubled by were severely punished such effects of popular readings and questionings of faith, imposed Satiety – The state of being fulfilled much severe controls over publishers and booksellers and began to maintain beyond the point of satisfaction an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558. Seditious – Action, speech or writing that is seen as opposing the government Source A Fig. 10 – The macabre dance. Fear of the book Print Culture This sixteenth-century print shows how the fear of printing was dramatised in visual representations of the time. In this highly Erasmus, a Latin scholar and a Catholic reformer, interesting woodcut the coming of print is associated with the end who criticised the excesses of Catholicism but kept of the world. The interior of the printer’s workshop here is the site his distance from Luther, expressed a deep anxiety of a dance of death. Skeletal figures control the printer and his about printing. He wrote in Adages (1508): workers, define and dictate what is to be done and what is to be produced. ‘To what corner of the world do they not fly, these swarms of new books? It may be that one Discuss here and there contributes something worth knowing, but the very multitude of them is hurtful Write briefly why some people feared that the development of to scholarship, because it creates a glut, and even in good things satiety is most harmful ... [printers] print could lead to the growth of dissenting ideas. fill the world with books, not just trifling things (such as I write, perhaps), but stupid, ignorant, slanderous, scandalous, raving, irreligious and seditious books, and the number of them is such that even the valuable publications lose their value.’ Source 113 2020-21

4 The Reading Mania Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries literacy rates went New words up in most parts of Europe. Churches of different denominations set up schools in villages, carrying literacy to peasants and artisans. Denominations – Sub groups within a religion By the end of the eighteenth century, in some parts of Europe Almanac – An annual publication giving literacy rates were as high as 60 to 80 per cent. As literacy and schools astronomical data, information about the spread in European countries, there was a virtual reading mania. movements of the sun and moon, timing of People wanted books to read and printers produced books in ever- full tides and eclipses, and much else that was increasing numbers. of importance in the everyday life of people Chapbook – A term used to describe pocket- New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new size books that are sold by travelling pedlars audiences. Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around called chapmen. These became popular from villages, carrying little books for sale. There were almanacs or ritual the time of the sixteenth-century print revolution calendars, along with ballads and folktales. But other forms of reading matter, largely for entertainment, began to reach ordinary readers as well. In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty pedlars known as chapmen, and sold for a penny, so that even the poor could buy them. In France, were the “Biliotheque Bleue”, which were low-priced small books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in cheap blue covers. Then there were the romances, printed on four to six pages, and the more substantial ‘histories’ which were stories about the past. Books were of various sizes, serving many different purposes and interests. India and the Contemporary World The periodical press developed from the early eighteenth century, Box 2 combining information about current affairs with entertainment. Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, In 1791, a London publisher, James Lackington, as well as news of developments in other places. wrote in his diary: Similarly, the ideas of scientists and philosophers now became more ‘The sale of books in general has increased accessible to the common people. Ancient and medieval scientific prodigiously within the last twenty years. The texts were compiled and published, and maps and scientific diagrams poorer sort of farmers and even the poor country were widely printed. When scientists like Isaac Newton began to people in general who before that period spent publish their discoveries, they could influence a much wider circle their winter evenings in relating stories of witches, of scientifically minded readers. The writings of thinkers such as ghosts, hobgoblins … now shorten the winter Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau were also widely night by hearing their sons and daughters read printed and read. Thus their ideas about science, reason and rationality them tales, romances, etc. If John goes to town found their way into popular literature. with a load of hay, he is charged to be sure not to forget to bring home Peregrine Pickle’s Adventure … and when Dolly is sent to sell her eggs, she is commissioned to purchase The History of Joseph Andrews.’ 114 2020-21

4.1 ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!’ By the mid-eighteenth century, there was a common conviction that Source B books were a means of spreading progress and enlightenment. Many believed that books could change the world, liberate society from This is how Mercier describes the impact of the despotism and tyranny, and herald a time when reason and intellect printed word, and the power of reading in one would rule. Louise-Sebastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth-century of his books: France, declared: ‘The printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force that will sweep despotism ‘Anyone who had seen me reading would have away.’ In many of Mercier’s novels, the heroes are transformed by compared me to a man dying of thirst who was acts of reading. They devour books, are lost in the world books gulping down some fresh, pure water … Lighting create, and become enlightened in the process. Convinced of the my lamp with extraordinary caution, I threw power of print in bringing enlightenment and destroying the basis myself hungrily into the reading. An easy of despotism, Mercier proclaimed: ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of eloquence, effortless and animated, carried me the world! Tremble before the virtual writer!’ from one page to the next without my noticing it. A clock struck off the hours in the silence of 4.2 Print Culture and the French Revolution the shadows, and I heard nothing. My lamp began to run out of oil and produced only a pale light, but still I read on. I could not even take out time to raise the wick for fear of interrupting my pleasure. How those new ideas rushed into my brain! How my intelligence adopted them!’ Many historians have argued that print culture created the conditions Quoted by Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best- within which French Revolution occurred. Can we make such Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, 1995. a connection? Source Three types of arguments have been usually put forward. First: print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. New words Collectively, their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. They argued for the rule of reason rather Despotism – A system of governance in which than custom, and demanded that everything be judged through the absolute power is exercised by an individual, application of reason and rationality. They attacked the sacred unregulated by legal and constitutional checks authority of the Church and the despotic power of the state, thus eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition. The Print Culture writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely; and those who read these books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning, critical and rational. Second: print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. All values, norms and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of reason, and recognised the need to question existing ideas and beliefs. Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being. Third: by the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised their morality. In the process, it raised 115 2020-21

questions about the existing social order. Cartoons and caricatures Activity typically suggested that the monarchy remained absorbed only in sensual pleasures while the common people suffered immense Imagine that you are a cartoonist in France hardships. This literature circulated underground and led to the before the revolution. Design a cartoon as it growth of hostile sentiments against the monarchy. would have appeared in a pamphlet. How do we look at these arguments? There can be no doubt that print helps the spread of ideas. But we must remember that people did not read just one kind of literature. If they read the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau, they were also exposed to monarchical and Church propaganda. They were not influenced directly by everything they read or saw. They accepted some ideas and rejected others. They interpreted things their own way. Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently. India and the Contemporary World Fig. 11 – The nobility and the common people before the French Revolution, a cartoon of the late eighteenth century. The cartoon shows how the ordinary people – peasants, artisans and workers – had a hard time while the nobility enjoyed life and oppressed them. Circulation of cartoons like this one had an impact on the thinking of people before the revolution. Discuss Why do some historians think that print culture created the basis for the French Revolution? 116 2020-21

5 The Nineteenth Century The nineteenth century saw vast leaps in mass literacy in Europe, bringing in large numbers of new readers among children, women and workers. 5.1 Children, Women and Workers As primary education became compulsory from the late nineteenth century, children became an important category of readers. Production of school textbooks became critical for the publishing industry. A children’s press, devoted to literature for children alone, was set up in France in 1857. This press published new works as well as old fairy tales and folk tales. The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years compiling traditional folk tales gathered from peasants. What they collected was edited before the stories were published in a collection in 1812. Anything that was considered unsuitable for children or would appear vulgar to the elites, was not included in the published version. Rural folk tales thus acquired a new form. In this way, print recorded old tales but also changed them. Women became important as readers as well as writers. Penny magazines (see Fig. 12) were especially meant for women, as Fig. 12 – Frontispiece of Penny Magazine. were manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping. Penny Magazine was published between 1832 and 1835 When novels began to be written in the nineteenth century, in England by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful women were seen as important readers. Some of the best- Knowledge. It was aimed primarily at the working class. known novelists were women: Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot. Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman: a person with will, strength of personality, determination and the power to think. Box 3 Print Culture Lending libraries had been in existence from the seventeenth century Thomas Wood, a Yorkshire mechanic, narrated onwards. In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England how he would rent old newspapers and read became instruments for educating white-collar workers, artisans them by firelight in the evenings as he could not and lower-middle-class people. Sometimes, self-educated working afford candles. Autobiographies of poor people class people wrote for themselves. After the working day was narrated their struggles to read against grim gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers had obstacles: the twentieth-century Russian some time for self-improvement and self-expression. They wrote revolutionary author Maxim Gorky’s My Childhood political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers. and My University provide glimpses of such struggles. 117 2020-21

5.2 Further Innovations Activity By the late eighteenth century, the press came to be made out of Look at Fig. 13. What impact do such metal. Through the nineteenth century, there were a series of further advertisements have on the public mind? innovations in printing technology. By the mid-nineteenth century, Do you think everyone reacts to printed material Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the power-driven in the same way? cylindrical press. This was capable of printing 8,000 sheets per hour. This press was particularly useful for printing newspapers. In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed which could print up to six colours at a time. From the turn of the twentieth century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations. A series of other developments followed. Methods of feeding paper improved, the quality of plates became better, automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the colour register were introduced. The accumulation of several individual mechanical improvements transformed the appearance of printed texts. Printers and publishers continuously developed new strategies to sell their product. Nineteenth-century periodicals serialised important novels, which gave birth to a particular way of writing novels. In the 1920s in England, popular works were sold in cheap series, called the Shilling Series. The dust cover or the book jacket is also a twentieth-century innovation. With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, publishers feared a decline in book purchases. To sustain buying, they brought out cheap paperback editions. India and the Contemporary World Fig. 13 – Advertisements at a railway station in England, a lithograph by Alfred Concanen, 1874. Printed advertisements and notices were plastered on street walls, railway platforms and public buildings. 118 2020-21

6 India and the World of Print Fig. 14 – Pages from the Gita Let us see when printing began in India and how ideas and information Govinda of were written before the age of print. Jayadeva, eighteenth century. 6.1 Manuscripts Before the Age of Print This is a palm-leaf India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – handwritten in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages. manuscript in Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper. accordion format. Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated. They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation. Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print, down to the late nineteenth century. Manuscripts, however, were highly expensive and fragile. They had to be handled carefully, and they could not be read easily as the Print Culture Fig. 15 – Pages from the Diwan of Hafiz, 1824. 119 Hafiz was a fourteenth-century poet whose collected works are known as Diwan. Notice the beautiful calligraphy and the elaborate illustration and design. Manuscripts like this continued to be produced for the rich even after the coming of the letterpress. 2020-21

script was written in different styles. So Fig. 16 – Pages from the Rigveda. manuscripts were not widely used in Handwritten manuscripts continued to be produced in India till much after everyday life. Even though pre-colonial the coming of print. This manuscript was produced in the eighteenth Bengal had developed an extensive network century in the Malayalam script. of village primary schools, students very often did not read texts. They only learnt to write. Teachers dictated portions of texts from memory and students wrote them down. Many thus became literate without ever actually reading any kinds of texts. 6.2 Print Comes to India The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century. Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts. By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages. Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them. By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of them translations of older works. The English language press did not grow in India till quite late even though the English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century. India and the Contemporary World From 1780, James Augustus Hickey began to edit the Bengal Gazette, Source C a weekly magazine that described itself as ‘a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none’. So it was private English enterprise, As late as 1768, a William Bolts affixed a notice proud of its independence from colonial influence, that began English on a public building in Calcutta: printing in India. Hickey published a lot of advertisements, including those that related to the import and sale of slaves. But he also ‘To the Public: Mr. Bolts takes this method of published a lot of gossip about the Company’s senior officials in informing the public that the want of a printing India. Enraged by this, Governor-General Warren Hastings press in this city being of a great disadvantage in persecuted Hickey, and encouraged the publication of officially business ... he is going to give the best sanctioned newspapers that could counter the flow of information encouragement to any ... persons who are that damaged the image of the colonial government. By the versed in the business of printing.’ close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in print. There were Indians, too, who began Bolts, however, left for England soon after and to publish Indian newspapers. The first to appear was the weekly nothing came of the promise. Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy. Source 120 2020-21

7 Religious Reform and Public Debates From the early nineteenth century, as you know, there were intense New words Print Culture debates around religious issues. Different groups confronted the Ulama – Legal scholars of Islam and the sharia changes happening within colonial society in different ways, and ( a body of Islamic law) offered a variety of new interpretations of the beliefs of different Fatwa – A legal pronouncement on Islamic religions. Some criticised existing practices and campaigned for law usually given by a mufti (legal scholar) to reform, while others countered the arguments of reformers. These clarify issues on which the law is uncertain debates were carried out in public and in print. Printed tracts and newspapers not only spread the new ideas, but they shaped the nature of the debate. A wider public could now participate in these public discussions and express their views. New ideas emerged through these clashes of opinions. This was a time of intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry. In Bengal, as the debate developed, tracts and newspapers proliferated, circulating a variety of arguments. To reach a wider audience, the ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of ordinary people. Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions. From 1822, two Persian newspapers were published, Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar. In the same year, a Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, made its appearance. In north India, the ulama were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties. They feared that colonial rulers would encourage conversion, change the Muslim personal laws. To counter this, they used cheap lithographic presses, published Persian and Urdu translations of holy scriptures, and printed religious newspapers and tracts. The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands upon thousands of fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines. All through the nineteenth century, a number of Muslim sects and seminaries appeared, each with a different interpretation of faith, each keen on enlarging its following and countering the influence of its opponents. Urdu print helped them conduct these battles in public. Among Hindus, too, print encouraged the reading of religious texts, especially in the vernacular languages. The first printed edition of 121 2020-21

the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a sixteenth-century text, came out from Calcutta in 1810. By the mid-nineteenth century, cheap lithographic editions flooded north Indian markets. From the 1880s, the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in vernaculars. In their printed and portable form, these could be read easily by the faithful at any place and time. They could also be read out to large groups of illiterate men and women. Religious texts, therefore, reached a very wide circle of people, encouraging discussions, debates and controversies within and among different religions. Print did not only stimulate the publication of conflicting opinions amongst communities, but it also connected communities and people in different parts of India. Newspapers conveyed news from one place to another, creating pan-Indian identities. Source D Why Newspapers? ‘Krishnaji Trimbuck Ranade inhabitant of Poona intends to publish a Newspaper in the Marathi Language with a view of affording useful information on every topic of local interest. It will be open for free discussion on subjects of general utility, scientific investigation and the speculations connected with the antiquities, statistics, curiosities, history and geography of the country and of the Deccan especially… the patronage and support of all interested in the diffusion of knowledge and Welfare of the People is earnestly solicited.’ Bombay Telegraph and Courier, 6 January 1849 ‘The task of the native newspapers and political associations is identical to the role of the Opposition in the House of Commons in Parliament in England. That is of critically examining government policy to suggest improvements, by removing those parts that will not be to the benefit of the people, and also by ensuring speedy implementation. These associations ought to carefully study the particular issues, gather diverse relevant information on the nation as well as on what are the possible and desirable improvements, and this will surely earn it considerable influence.’ India and the Contemporary World Native Opinion, 3 April 1870. Source 122 2020-21

8 New Forms of Publication Print Culture Printing created an appetite for new kinds of writing. As more and 123 more people could now read, they wanted to see their own lives, experiences, emotions and relationships reflected in what they read. The novel, a literary firm which had developed in Europe, ideally catered to this need. It soon acquired distinctively Indian forms and styles. For readers, it opened up new worlds of experience, and gave a vivid sense of the diversity of human lives. Other new literary forms also entered the world of reading – lyrics, short stories, essays about social and political matters. In different ways, they reinforced the new emphasis on human lives and intimate feelings, about the political and social rules that shaped such things. By the end of the nineteenth century, a new visual culture was taking shape. With the setting up of an increasing number of printing presses, visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies. Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation. Poor wood engravers who made woodblocks set up shop near the letterpresses, and were employed by print shops. Cheap prints and calendars, easily available in the bazaar, could be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places of work. These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture. By the 1870s, caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and newspapers, commenting on social and political issues. Some caricatures ridiculed the educated Indians’ fascination with Western tastes and clothes, while others expressed the fear of social change. There were imperial caricatures lampooning nationalists, as well as nationalist cartoons criticising imperial rule. Fig. 17 – Raja Ritudhwaj rescuing Princess Madalsa from the captivity of demons, print by Ravi Varma. Raja Ravi Varma produced innumerable mythological paintings that were printed at the Ravi Varma Press. 2020-21

8.1 Women and Print Lives and feelings of women began to be written in particularly vivid and intense ways. Women’s reading, therefore, increased enormously in middle-class homes. Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home, and sent them to schools when women’s schools were set up in the cities and towns after the mid-nineteenth century. Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be educated. They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter which could be used for home-based schooling. India and the Contemporary World But not all families were liberal. Conservative Hindus believed Fig. 18 – The cover page of Indian Charivari. that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared that The Indian Charivari was one of the many educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. journals of caricature and satire published in Sometimes, rebel women defied such prohibition. We know the the late nineteenth century. story of a girl in a conservative Muslim family of north India Notice that the imperial British figure is who secretly learnt to read and write in Urdu. Her family wanted positioned right at the centre. He is her to read only the Arabic Quran which she did not understand. authoritative and imperial; telling the natives So she insisted on learning to read a language that was her own. In what is to be done. The natives sit on either East Bengal, in the early nineteenth century, Rashsundari Debi, a side of him, servile and submissive. The young married girl in a very orthodox household, learnt to read in Indians are being shown a copy of Punch, the the secrecy of her kitchen. Later, she wrote her autobiography British journal of cartoons and satire. You can Amar Jiban which was published in 1876. It was the first full-length almost hear the British master say – ‘This is autobiography published in the Bengali language. the model, produce Indian versions of it.’ Since social reforms and novels had already created a great interest Source E in women’s lives and emotions, there was also an interest in what women would have to say about their own lives. From the 1860s, In 1926, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein, a a few Bengali women like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books noted educationist and literary figure, strongly highlighting the experiences of women – about how women were condemned men for withholding education from imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic women in the name of religion as she addressed labour and treated unjustly by the very people they served. In the the Bengal Women’s Education Conference: 1880s, in present-day Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita ‘The opponents of female education say that Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives women will become unruly … Fie! They call of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows. A woman in a themselves Muslims and yet go against the basic Tamil novel expressed what reading meant to women who were tenet of Islam which gives Women an equal right so greatly confined by social regulations: ‘For various reasons, my to education. If men are not led astray once world is small … More than half my life’s happiness has come from books …’ Sourceeducated, why should women?’ While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture had developed early, Hindi printing began seriously only from the 1870s. Soon, a large segment of it was devoted to the education of women. In 124 2020-21

the early twentieth century, journals, written for and sometimes Fig. 19 – Ghor Kali (The End of the edited by women, became extremely popular. They discussed World), coloured woodcut, late issues like women’s education, widowhood, widow remarriage nineteenth century. and the national movement. Some of them offered household The artist’s vision of the destruction and fashion lessons to women and brought entertainment through of proper family relations. Here the short stories and serialised novels. husband is totally dominated by his wife who is perched on his shoulder. In Punjab, too, a similar folk literature was widely printed from He is cruel towards his mother, the early twentieth century. Ram Chaddha published the fast-selling dragging her like an animal, by the Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to be obedient wives. noose. The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with a similar message. Many of these were in the form of dialogues about the qualities of a good woman. In Bengal, an entire area in central Calcutta – the Battala – was devoted to the printing of popular books. Here you could buy cheap editions of religious tracts and scriptures, as well as literature that was considered obscene and scandalous. By the late nineteenth century, a lot of these books were being profusely illustrated with woodcuts and coloured lithographs. Pedlars took the Battala publications to homes, enabling women to read them in their leisure time. Fig. 20 – An Indian Print Culture couple, black and white woodcut. The image shows the artist’s fear that the cultural impact of the West has turned the family upside down. Notice that the man is playing the veena while the woman is smoking a hookah. The move towards women’s education in the late nineteenth century created anxiety about the breakdown of traditional family roles. 125 2020-21

Fig. 21 – A European couple sitting on chairs, nineteenth-century woodcut. The picture suggests traditional family roles. The Sahib holds a liquor bottle in his hand while the Memsahib plays the violin. India and the Contemporary World 8.2 Print and the Poor People Activity Very cheap small books were brought to markets in nineteenth-century Look at Figs. 19, 20 and 21 carefully. Madras towns and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people travelling What comment are the artists making on the to markets to buy them. Public libraries were set up from the early twentieth century, expanding the access to books. These libraries were social changes taking place in society? located mostly in cities and towns, and at times in prosperous villages. What changes in society were taking place to For rich local patrons,setting up a library was a way of acquiring prestige. provoke this reaction? From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to Do you agree with the artist’s view? be written about in many printed tracts and essays. Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of ‘low caste’ protest movements, wrote about the Fig. 22 – Lakshminath injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri (1871). In the twentieth Bezbaruah (1868–1938) century, B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras, better known as Periyar, wrote powerfully on caste and He was a doyen of modern Assamese literature. their writings were read by people all over India. Local protest Burhi Aair Sadhu (Grandma’s Tales) is among his movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and tracts notable works. He penned the popular song of criticising ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future. Assam, ‘O Mor Apunar Desh’ (O’ my beloved land). Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked the education to write much about their experiences. But Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation. The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan. By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up libraries to educate themselves, following the example of Bombay workers. These were sponsored by social reformers who tried to restrict excessive drinking among them, to bring literacy and, sometimes, to propagate the message of nationalism. 126 2020-21

9 Print and Censorship Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India Company was Box 4 not too concerned with censorship. Strangely, its early measures to control printed matter were directed against Englishmen in India Sometimes, the government found it hard to who were critical of Company misrule and hated the actions of find candidates for editorship of loyalist papers. particular Company officers. The Company was worried that such When Sanders, editor of the Statesman that had criticisms might be used by its critics in England to attack its trade been founded in 1877, was approached, he monopoly in India. asked rudely how much he would be paid for suffering the loss of freedom. The Friend By the 1820s, the Calcutta Supreme Court passed certain regulations of India refused a government subsidy, fearing to control press freedom and the Company began encouraging that this would force it to be obedient to publication of newspapers that would celebrate Britsh rule. In 1835, government commands. faced with urgent petitions by editors of English and vernacular newspapers, Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws. Box 5 Thomas Macaulay, a liberal colonial official, formulated new rules that restored the earlier freedoms. The power of the printed word is most often seen in the way governments seek to regulate After the revolt of 1857, the attitude to freedom of the press and suppress print. The colonial government kept changed. Enraged Englishmen demanded a clamp down on the continuous track of all books and newspapers ‘native’ press. As vernacular newspapers became assertively published in India and passed numerous laws to nationalist, the colonial government began debating measures of control the press. stringent control. In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, During the First World War, under the Defence modelled on the Irish Press Laws. It provided the government of India Rules, 22 newspapers had to furnish with extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular securities. Of these, 18 shut down rather than press. From now on the government kept regular track of the comply with government orders. The Sedition vernacular newspapers published in different provinces. When a Committee Report under Rowlatt in 1919 further report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if strengthened controls that led to imposition of the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the penalties on various newspapers. At the outbreak printing machinery confiscated. of the Second World War, the Defence of India Act was passed, allowing censoring of reports of war-related topics. All reports about the Quit India movement came under its purview. In August 1942, about 90 newspapers were suppressed. Despite repressive measures, nationalist newspapers grew in numbers Source F Print Culture in all parts of India. They reported on colonial misrule and encouraged nationalist activities. Attempts to throttle nationalist Gandhi said in 1922: criticism provoked militant protest. This in turn led to a renewed cycle of persecution and protests. When Punjab revolutionaries were ‘Liberty of speech ... liberty of the press ... deported in 1907, Balgangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy about them in his Kesari. This led to his imprisonment in 1908, freedom of association. The Government of India provoking in turn widespread protests all over India. is now seeking to crush the three powerful vehicles of expressing and cultivating public opinion. The fight for Swaraj, for Khilafat ... means a fight for this threatened freedom before all else ...’ Source 127 2020-21

Write in brief Write in brief 1. Give reasons for the following: Discuss a) Woodblock print only came to Europe after 1295. India and the Contemporary World b) Martin Luther was in favour of print and spoke out in praise of it. c) The Roman Catholic Church began keeping an Index of Prohibited books from the mid-sixteenth century. d) Gandhi said the fight for Swaraj is a fight for liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and freedom of association. 2. Write short notes to show what you know about: a) The Gutenberg Press b) Erasmus’s idea of the printed book c) The Vernacular Press Act 3. What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century India mean to: a) Women b) The poor c) Reformers Discuss 1. Why did some people in eighteenth century Europe think that print culture would bring enlightenment and end despotism? 2. Why did some people fear the effect of easily available printed books? Choose one example from Europe and one from India. 3. What were the effects of the spread of print culture for poor people in nineteenth century India? 4. Explain how print culture assisted the growth of nationalism in India. Project Find out more about the changes in print technology in the last 100 years. Write about the changes, explaining why they have taken place, what their consequences have been. Project 128 2020-21